Construction IV

Walmar Wladimir Schwab was born in Moscow on 1 September 1902 and died in Onex, Switzerland, on 19 August 2000. A painter and print-maker in Paris during the 1920s, he later abandoned this for a career in chemistry and took Swiss nationality.

During his years in Paris, Schwab produced a series of pictures in the abstract geometrical style between the late 1920s and early 1930s. Between November–December 1929 he exhibited at the Galerie der Sturm in Berlin. He was also approached by Theo van Doesburg to sign the Art Concret manifesto but pleaded that he was constitutionally against joining artistic groups; however, he allowed a print of one of his works to appear in their art review in April 1930.

Long after his abandonment of art, Schwab was rediscovered in 1975, by which time geometrical abstraction had been accepted and was regarded as important. It was then that the Kunsthaus Zürich devoted an exhibition to 40 of his works, accompanied by a nine-page brochure, and thereafter paintings and posters of his began to appear in art showrooms.